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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25062742">Infected After All</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/her0esneverdie/pseuds/her0esneverdie'>her0esneverdie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Last of Us</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/F, Kinda, Slow Burn, ellie be like SHUTS OFF HER EMOTIONS</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:28:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,867</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25062742</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/her0esneverdie/pseuds/her0esneverdie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>-MASSIVE TLOU2 ENDING SPOILERS-<br/>Everyone that Ellie has ever loved has either died, or left. And she deserved it. When she was bitten, she might not have turned on the outside. She still looked the same. But she brings death wherever she goes. She kills, and she maims, and she destroys. All she's ever been good at is hate- so she guesses she's infected after all.<br/>Ellie tries to lose herself in a goal, to try and forget who she is and use her immunity for the purpose it was originally destined if she had died on that operating table. She's going to kill every last infected.<br/>(i wrote this in the midst of a panic attack after beating tlou2 so needless to say i did not proofread it but i will try my best for any future chapters. eventual ellie/dina. this is canon fucking fight me)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ellie could still hear the off-key guitar strings hum, rattling around her brain as she stepped off of the farm. She heard the song she couldn’t bear to sing. She heard Dina.<br/>
Dina was right. She was so right, in every way. But Ellie didn’t listen. Didn’t want to listen. She needed something to do, something to make the rushing of her thoughts slow down.</p><p>Her stride cut to an awkward pause as she walked past the gate, realizing for once that she had no plan. Nowhere to go. Ellie had nothing. She wasn’t going back to Jackson. Dina and Tommy, they both deserved better than that. Better than her. She had more or less ruined everything they had ever loved about her. Who else did she even know? Riley was dead. So was Marline. And Joel, and Jesse. She hurt Dina and Tommy so badly, she never wanted to see their faces again. Who else had ever cared about her? Ever, in her life? Cat? Did she even count? Was Cat even still alive? </p><p>Ellie stood still as a statue, missing fingers aching with a phantom pain. Her clothes were bloodied, her body scarred, and her will dead. </p><p>Her death was supposed to mean something. She was supposed to die for a purpose, to save everyone, to create a vaccine. Now, her death would mean nothing. And she wants nothing more than that meaningless death. To leave all of this behind, to do what should have been done years ago. Her immunity meant nothing anymore.<br/>
She wasn’t a person. She was a spectre of death and decay. All she had ever been able to do was kill, mutilate, and maim.<br/>
She may not have turned. She may not have lost herself initially-<br/>
But she really had been one of the infected all along, hadn’t she?</p><p>Erratic clicking sounded out from somewhere off in the distance, too far to see. Ellie’s hand snapped to her bow all the same, her instincts kicking in before the distance registered and she let her arm relax. She ran her fingers over the wood, realizing how much it felt like JJ’s crib.</p><p>Maybe Ellie wasn’t human. Maybe she was a murderous freak. Maybe all she had ever been good at was feeling hate, using that hate. But she loved. She knew love. She cared about the people close to her.</p><p>Ellie set her jaw, pulling her bow from her pack and nocking an arrow as she set off running toward the sound of the clicks.<br/>
She wasn’t any good at being a person, clearly. But she was great at killing.<br/>
She would kill the infected for them, use her immunity for their benefit.<br/>
Ellie was going to kill every last one of them.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It had been a month since Ellie had started her mission to kill every single infected. It was slow going, but it was definitely going. She hadn’t expected this much progress in just a month. <br/>Pushing out from the area around Jackson, Ellie had thinned the population out as best she could, but she was always caught in her tracks by the spores. They spread out from the walls, the fungus coating everything in sight. She couldn’t exactly shoot it. She was stuck.<br/>Until she raided the fire station. <br/>She had burst into the fire station after marking back where the local runners had been coming from. Jackson patrols had taken most of the supplies. The infected were still swarming, runners and clickers patrolling the upper floors while a bloater hid in the basement, festering in itself.<br/>The fight had been arduous. The bloater was hearty, and hard to nail down. Ellie sighed from behind her cover, tasting the foul burn of the spores in the room as she loaded a handful of incendiary shells into her shotgun. Vaulting over her cover, she blasted the bloater, feeling the searing heat press out from the barrel of her gun and find its mark in the infected monster; one blast burned into the fleshy growth of its stomach, and the second reaved its way through the monster’s head.<br/>Ellie felt a pang of satisfaction, stepping back as the bloater stumbled backwards and slammed into the coated wall behind it with a heavy cracking. Mushrooms all over the wall split open, the wall’s protruding outer coat of infection crashing inwards a bit as shards of fungus scattered across the ground. <br/>Ellie reached into her backpack with tired arms, ready to mark the location off of her map, when a metallic “thunk” rang out from in front of her. She peered over the tip of the map.<br/>A flamethrower. There had been a flamethrower trapped in the fungus.<br/>She stowed the map messily, scrambling to grab the weapon as if she had to fight a crowd for it. It was fully intact. She popped out the fuel canister and gave it a gentle shake. Still had quite a bit of fuel left.<br/>Ellie got back to her feet slowly, almost reverently, as she let the gun ease into her grip. She gave the trigger a hesitant pull, and fuel immediately started gushing out of the nozzle, a spark setting the fuel aflame midair as it utterly engulfed the fungal growth on the walls. The flame spread, hungry, burning the walls to charred ash. Ellie just sat back and watched as the spores slowly cleared from the air. She watched the fireworks go off, reaching into a nearby locker and pulling out the heavy suit of a firefighter. Hefty. Not easy to tear through. Definitely protects her from all the burning she’s going to be doing. Sitting underneath that, a mask. The respirator end had been ripped to pieces. She took it anyway. The respirator wasn’t the important part.</p><p>Ellie left the basement, stepping into the sunlight with her new attire fastened tightly on and the building behind her consumed by flame. She reached into her backpack with a gloved hand, pulling out her map and heading for the next infected spot.<br/>Before long, word began to spread across the west coast of the mythic firefighter. Some claimed to have seen it. Most wouldn’t believe them, but nobody could deny its handiwork. Buildings scarred with the remnants of raging flames spread across the country, green slowly starting to spring up after the area had been removed of infection. It was almost as if nature were dancing on its grave. The story went that the firefighter was a person, not even a very big person, decked head to toe in a firefighter’s outfit. Their face was obscured by a mask, their head protected by a helmet, two limp empty fingers on the glove of their left hand.They would avoid settlements of any kind, but work their way through nearby buildings and purge them completely of any infected and spores, leaving a burned husk of a building. </p><p>Ellie heard the stories sometimes. Mostly when she ran into survivors while working for one reason or another. She couldn’t bring herself to care. She asked them for infected hotspots, and went on her way.</p><p>Ellie was beginning to forget what everyone back in Jackson looked like. She couldn’t remember how long it had been. She stopped counting after the first month. She couldn’t remember Cat’s eye color. The town doctor, she forgot her name. It wasn’t important anymore. She was beginning to lose all of them. All of them but Joel, beaten and bloodied, his eyes swollen shut. And Dina. She could never forget Dina. <br/>She had spent hours just looking at her, sketching her when they were together. She found herself thinking about the wisps of dark hair that would sneak their way past her ears. The cute bun she kept her hair in. The freckles that danced across her face. It was all painfully clear. She found herself wishing she could forget her sometimes. Wishing she didn’t stay up at night, wondering what the girl whose life she ruined was up to. Those were the nights she would let her underused voice croak out into the forest sky, singing the song that would be burned into her mind for the rest of her life.<br/>“If I ever were to lose you, I’d surely lose myself…”<br/>She missed being able to play the guitar on those nights. The phantom pain at her missing digits always acted up as she tried to finger out the chords in the crisp night air. <br/>“...Everything I have found here, I’ve not found myself…”<br/>Those were the nights when she felt like Ellie again, and not the firefighter. She didn’t like it.<br/>It hurt to be Ellie.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The firefighter pushed their way through the hospital, their flamethrower biting back a swarm of infected. Behind them stood three battered wolves, their gas masks strapped tightly to their faces. They had been scavenging, and gotten trapped when the firefighter began their purge of the hospital, their first purge in Seattle. The hem of their tan outfit flapped in the searing breeze, the flames crumbling the walls around them as the spores in the air began to clear out. <br/>“Firefighter-” One of the wolves, a short woman, spoke. She flinched as the firefighter looked her way.<br/>“Y-your mask is cracked.” She pointed, warily.<br/>The firefighter felt at her mask, and sure enough the glass over her left eye had shattered. <br/>“You aren’t coughing.” A second wolf chipped in, confused.<br/>The firefighter just stared, almost daring them to ask more questions with their one visible eye. It was steely, determined, and fucking terrifying. <br/>“How are you even human?” The last wolf said, an uneasy laugh breaking the silence.<br/>“I’m not.” The firefighter said, devoid of emotion. “We need to leave.”</p><p>“Do you know where any infection hubs are around here?” The firefighter said as they marched out the front door, away from the flames. <br/>“No, I don’t know. Do you know, Jess?” Wolf number three looked to his compatriot for assistance.<br/>“Jess” went white as a sheet. “No, not off the top of my head. Y-you should come back to base with us. We can radio around there.” She said.<br/>“You don’t have a radio on you?”<br/>“It got smashed in the fight.”<br/>“...Fine.”<br/>It was the first time the firefighter had to step foot in a settlement in who knows how long. they weren’t happy.</p><p>The base was decently fortified, though noticeably less stocked or guarded compared to the last time Ellie saw it. The firefighter walked into something more akin to a settlement. Still, they had supplies to get by and a radio network to connect through.<br/>“Jess” had led the firefighter over to the radio, taking the microphone with shaky hands. <br/>“Jess here. Zone Six. I’ve got the, uh…” She took another glance at the firefighter, as if confirming that what they were saying was true.<br/>“The firefighter is here. With me. They want to know if there are any big infected zones in the area that they should focus fire on. Over.”<br/>The line went silent for a moment, before it sparked to life, an operator speaking in a tone that let you know he was rolling his eyes, even if you couldn’t see it.<br/>“Jess, don’t fuck around on official lines. The firefighter is a myth. Return to finish your mission report on the hospital raid. Over.”<br/>The firefighter grasped the mic in their gloved hand, pulling it away from “Jess” and pressing the button.<br/>“Tell me where the infected gather in this area. I’ve purged the hospital. I’d like to keep moving.” Their tone was fierce, solid as rock and twice as rough. They’d forgotten how little they’d been speaking before now. The line went silent again as the firefighter pulled out their map and prepared to mark down the locations. Sure enough, the operator began speaking, albeit with a markedly more frightened tone. The firefighter circled the locations on their map, and began to put it away when the operator, feeling a touch brave for some reason, decided to ask a question.<br/>“Excuse me, firefighter? You ‘purge’ with flame, right? Over.”<br/>The firefighter sighed. It was a pointless question. “Yes. I do.”<br/>“So there shouldn’t be any way for the infected to still be around after you finish purging an area? Over.”<br/>“Obviously not. And stop fuckin’ saying ‘over.’ It’s annoying”<br/>“Right. Then how did the small resurgence in Wyoming happen?”</p><p>Ellie’s blood ran cold.<br/>“The what?” She gripped the microphone even tighter, hearing a slight creak as she did. “Jess” jumped slightly.<br/>“The resurgence in Wyoming. Where the infected started coming back.”<br/>Another creak of protest from the microphone as Ellie squeezed even harder.<br/>“Where in Wyoming?” Every muscle in her body tightened. She dreaded the answer. Part of her knew it was coming.<br/>“Jackson County.”<br/>The microphone snapped in two with a weak crack, and Ellie immediately dropped it and started towards a car. Some wolves cried after her. She wasn’t listening. They’d left the keys in the car. She twisted the ignition, and rolled off toward the sunset. Toward Jackson.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ellie thumped along in her stolen truck, riding across long-since overgrown roads toward the place that used to be her home. “Towards Dina.” A part of her whispered. She elected to ignore it. She wasn’t getting anywhere near the town. She was finding the infection source and putting an end to it. Then, she was going to leave. <br/>When she finally entered Jackson County, it was on foot. The truck had run out of gas, and she had no reason to waste any of her flamethrower fuel on pushing a metal hunk of junk into Jackson. <br/>Pushing over a hill, she saw Jackson for the first time in what felt like ages. It looked the same. Mostly. There were some corpses of infected that had been taken out while heading toward the west gate. Ellie headed west, away from Jackson.</p><p>The fucking hotel. The hotel she’d walked into with Joel all those years ago. They never sent in a search party like Joel said they would, and it spread. It infected outsiders. Now there was a small army building up in their wake. Ellie sighed, staring into the doorway as she snapped a new canister of fuel into place. She knew she should have come back here when she was clearing out Jackson. But she didn’t. Because she couldn’t face her memories of Joel.<br/>She ventured into the fray.</p><p>It had gone well at first. Not perfectly, but manageable. She had gained a few new scars, but nothing too bad. Then the floor gave out, and she was dropped right into a swarm. Her mask shattered on the ground, Ellie pushed to her feet as bloaters, clickers, and runners all closed in on her. Too many to take out safely, and no cover protecting her back if she tried. She was stuck. The reality sunk in that she was going to die here, where she and Joel had once tread. It felt, in a way, poetic. In another way, it felt kind of stupid. <br/>It felt really fucking stupid. <br/>Ellie felt her heart burn in a way it hadn’t in far too long, a passion consuming her from the inside. For once, for one solid moment, she felt like herself again. And in that moment, she decided that she was going to be the only one who got to choose how she died. </p><p>She pulled the trigger on the flamethrower, but kept the flame snuffed with her thumb. Fuel spread all along the ground, coating the charging horde as it did so. The room smelt thickly of gasoline, the infected slipping in the fuel and falling over. <br/>With that, Ellie snapped open her lighter and dropped it on the floor.</p><p>The place was alight in an instant. The screeching of infected filled the air in a cacaphonous roar, the entire building shuddering as the fire reached toward the ceiling and the beams above snapped and groaned. <br/>Ellie felt her body become engulfed by the flames. The firefighter suit helped, but it didn’t stop the fire from consuming her. Her path cleared, she ran up the stairs, smoldering as she felt the burning old wood of the hotel fill her lungs with smoke. The fire followed her as she went, stretching to every surface it could find. She coughed, hacked, and pushed herself through the flames. As her adrenaline spike died off, she could feel the burns screaming from her legs and arms as she pounded on the front door. Her thoughts began to slow, the smoke filling her head and fogging her vision. She slammed her body against the door again. And again. And again. Until finally, it gave way and she was sent tumbling to the ground outside. Her helmet hit the pavement with a heavy knock as it bounced off her head, leaving her face fully exposed for the first time since her purge truly began. <br/>Ellie could vaguely make out the sound of horse hooves pounding against the ground as she drifted off, then she thought she heard someone say her name. <br/>She saw Cat.<br/>Her eyes were green. How could she have forgotten? Even if she didn’t know how long it’d been since she saw her last, her eyes matched her favorite color. It was a whole thing. Ellie remembered.<br/>Then, Ellie passed out.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dina knew exactly how long it had been since Ellie left.<br/>
Thirteen months.<br/>
She counted.<br/>
Every single day that went by in her journal, she made a note of how many days it had been. She tried to stop, once. Tried to force herself to get over Ellie. Told herself that counting the days was useless, since she was already dead. She wasn’t coming back. Dina knew that- but she just ended up memorizing the date anyway. It was hopeless. She knew Ellie was dead. She had to be. Otherwise she’d be up at the farm. Tommy goes to check sometimes. She might hate his guts, but he would have told her.<br/>
Thirteen months.<br/>
Ellie chose her revenge over Dina and JJ. Over their family. She chose to leave. She chose every last part of how they left things off.<br/>
So why did it still hurt?<br/>
Why did the fact that Ellie was dead hurt her so much?<br/>
Mourning was one thing. Missing her, still, understandable. But in thirteen months, she’d never been able to shake free of it all. She moved back to Jackson with JJ, moved back into her old apartment. She helped out around town instead of patrolling like she used to. She became a staple in the community again. And yet, when anyone tried to ask her to dance, or to go on a date with them, she always thought of Ellie. Cat tried, once. Brian had tried a couple times. She always thought about that night at Seth’s. Dancing with her. At the farm, goofing around with her in the kitchen. She always thought about Ellie.<br/>
Thirteen months, now.<br/>
Thirteen months since she left.<br/>
She probably died around three weeks into that. She’s most likely been dead for over a year.<br/>
She used to call JJ “potato.”<br/>
She left. She chose to leave. Regardless of the fact that Tommy instigated her, she still chose to leave.<br/>
She used to call him her little spud.<br/>
Thirteen months ago.<br/>
She used to hold her while she slept.<br/>
Thirteen months.<br/>
“400 days since Ellie left.”<br/>
Dina etched it into the top corner of her journal.<br/>
“Today, I got a sandwich from Seth’s.”<br/>
She tried not to put too much pressure on the pen. She didn’t want it to bleed through. Why was she still emotional about this? She tried not to make too much noise. JJ was asleep.<br/>
“It had rabbit meat. It tasted like lunches we used to have back on the farm.”<br/>
She struck the period extra hard, the pen almost stabbing through the page.<br/>
She decided to stop there.<br/>
A sudden and shaky knock rang out at her door, and Dina had to stop herself from jumping for her gun. She sighed, stood up, and walked over to the door. Another knock. Dina pulled the door open, and to her displeasure found Tommy standing there, out of breath, his horse not even tied up behind him.<br/>
“What?” Dana spat. She hardly had time for Tommy on good days.<br/>
“Ellie’s alive.” Tommy said, the words practically spilling out of his mouth as soon as they got the chance. “She’s with the doctor.”<br/>
Dina’s world froze.<br/>
Thirteen months ago, Ellie left. For ten months, Dina had been convinced that she died. And now she was here. In Jackson.<br/>
She didn’t know if she even wanted to see her.<br/>
She got on the horse all the same. </p><p>They arrived at the clinic, Tommy pushing her to move on in while he tied up his horse. And there, for the first time in thirteen months, Dina saw Ellie.<br/>
She was pale. Dreadfully pale. Her skin’s uncomfortable porcelain look was broken apart by scars, both old and new. More new than old. Further down, she saw her legs had been scarred a deep red. Burn scars. And on her left hand, she was missing two fingers. Her hair was greasy and matted. She looked wild and unkempt.<br/>
Dr. Matthews gave Dina a calm look, but his eyes looked grave.<br/>
“She’s got scars all over her body that haven’t quite healed right, burns on her legs, and she’s malnourished. She’s starting to stir, but I don’t think she’ll be… well… for a while.”<br/>
Dina just nodded. Stared. Took in every inch of Ellie’s body, double checking the things that were the same and memorizing the things that weren’t.<br/>
Ellie’s hand snapped out, grasping wildly as Dr. Matthews gasped, taking a quick step back.<br/>
She grabbed for something that wasn’t there, but Dina still knew what she was doing. She was searching for her weapon.<br/>
Finding nothing, Ellie’s eyes peered open slowly.<br/>
To see Dina.</p><p>Ellie launched out of the bed in a flash, her burned legs giving way underneath her as she fell to the ground. She let out a cry of pain, scrambling to her feet and running to the nearest window with the whimper of a wounded animal, standing herself up against the wall. She reeled back her elbow and shattered the glass, trying to prepare herself to jump but crumbling on her legs again as she went. She hit the floor, knocked out in an instant.<br/>
Dr. Matthews, finally catching up to her, lifted the thin girl up into his arms and back onto the bed.<br/>
“She’s passed out from exhaustion.” He said. He spoke quietly, gently.<br/>
“I think you might need to leave for now. In case she wakes up again.”<br/>
Dina just nodded, turning and passing Tommy on her way out. He tried to say something to her, but she didn’t hear it. Wouldn’t hear it.<br/>
She was thinking about other things.<br/>
She just saw Ellie for the first time in thirteen months.<br/>
And she tried to run away from her.<br/>
And for some reason, Dina had wanted to run after her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>okayyyy this is the last chapter i wrote while having a literal panic attack about that ending i dont know if the others will be more polished but they will be less of me having just eaten five airheads in a row at some attempt of self care.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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